More warming, more ticks, more disease

Posted 5/3/17

Anyone who lives in this region likely knows one or two people or more who have been infected with Lyme disease from a tick bite. That used to be a rare occurrence in Sullivan County in New York, and …

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More warming, more ticks, more disease

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Anyone who lives in this region likely knows one or two people or more who have been infected with Lyme disease from a tick bite. That used to be a rare occurrence in Sullivan County in New York, and Wayne and Pike counties in Pennsylvania. But that has changed, at least in part, because the region has become more hospitable to ticks because of climate change.

Ticks need to feed on warm-blooded mammals over a two-year period to complete their life cycle. Ticks are cold blooded and therefore become inactive in cold weather. If the weather stays cold for a long enough period of time, ticks can use up their stores of energy and die. So with warmer spring and fall seasons, ticks have an expanded chance of making it through the winter.

With the mild winter that just ended, experts predict a bumper crop of the tiny arachnids and with it a bumper crop of new cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

Here’s what the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says about it (www.epa.gov/climate-indicators): “Tick habitat and populations are influenced by many factors, including climate. Nationwide, the rate of reported cases of Lyme disease has approximately doubled since 1991. The number and distribution of reported cases of Lyme disease have increased in the Northeast and upper Midwest over time, where some states now report 50 to 100 more cases of Lyme disease per 100,000 people than they did in 1991.”

Of course, other reasons for the increase include a large deer population, more homes in wooded areas, and better recognition of the disease. But it’s clear that the changing climate is playing a role.

Further, climate change is playing a role in many other areas of life connected to nature. According to the EPA website, the growing season in the contiguous 48 state has increased an average of 12 days per year from 1895 through today, and that is true in New York and Pennsylvania.

The last frost in spring in most of the country is coming four to five days earlier that it did 100 years ago, and that is true for New York and Pennsylvania; the first frost in the fall is coming on average 10 to 12 days later in the two  states than it did in 1895.

With President Donald Trump now a resident of the White House for more than 100 days, some of the climate change information on the EPA website has been removed, including the page that explains President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. And Trump has famously said and climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

As of May 1, however, these words still remain on the EPA’s website: “The Earth’s climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events—like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures—are already happening. Many of these observed changes are linked to the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, caused by human activities.”

And an increased tick population in our region is part of that change.

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